600 Cab Ride? Search For Sibling Becomes Odyssey For Yugoslav Pair

March 15, 1988|by CHUCK AYERS, The Morning Call

It took a plane trip from Yugoslavia, a $600 cab ride from New York City and a weekend of searching, but the reunion was worth it.

The reunion of Nasta and Sophia Vlahovic with their brother, Dimitri, was a trial of communication, coincidence, perseverance and frustration that began Friday in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Nasta and Sophia had not heard from Dimitri since 1985.

It was also an incredible welcome to the United States for the pair, neither of whom had ever traveled to this country and neither of whom understands English.

Concerned that letters from Dimitri, who only two weeks ago moved from Spinnerstown to Wescosville, had not reached the family for three years, the brother and sister set out to find him, bearing his last known address scrawled on a piece of paper. It contained only the mailing address of Pennsburg R.D.

"My brother was concerned what was going on. My brother and sister decided to fly and see what happened, if I'm still alive," Dimitri said, choking back the emotion that occasionally overcame him as he spoke.

Sophia set out from the capital city and flew to Paris, where she was joined by Nasta, who is a chauffeur there. While at the airport, they sent a telegram to Dimitri telling him they would arrive at Kennedy International Airport Saturday night and asking that he meet them there.

When they arrived, there was no sign of their brother. So they waited. For five hours they waited. And as the time passed, it deepened their sense that something might be horribly wrong.

So Nasta hailed a cab at the airport and conveyed to the driver where he wanted to go by showing him the note containing Dimitri's address.

Several hours and $600 later, the Vlahovics found themselves in Allentown in a cab that had broken down. A second cab was called to complete the trek, but with the incomplete address, they were unable to locate their brother.

It was 1 a.m. Sunday and the determined travelers sat at the Mister Donut beside Judge Cooper's Restaurant on Route 29, East Greenville, exhausted, alone, unable to communicate their frustrations.

It was there that two hours later, George Judge, the owner of the adjacent restaurant, found the couple and quickly realized that something was amiss. He awakened his wife, Mary, who speaks Ukrainian, in the hope that the two languages would be sufficiently similar to enable communication. They weren't.

The couple began looking through the phone book for the lost brother, but had no success. So they placed a call to a friend at 4 a.m. in the hope of finding someone who could speak to Nasta in French.

No luck. So the Judges took the recent arrivals to a nearby motel for the night, gave them their phone number and conveyed that they should call when they got up Sunday.

Louise Cope, manager of the restaurant, picks up the story from there:

Sunday morning they summoned Elizabeth Biechy, a French teacher at Upper Perkiomen High School.

With her ability to communicate with Nasta, "We began finding out exactly who they were looking for," Cope said. "It turned out to be a customer of ours who we hadn't seen for a while. He had gone down to Mexico for a while."

Calls to the local post office failed to locate Dimitri, so they contacted state police at Limerick. Through their efforts, Dimitri's former residence on Kings Ward Road, Upper Hanover Township, was located. The current owners, though, didn't know Vlahovic's new address.

Then it occurred to Cope that Dimitri mentioned some time ago that he was moving to Spinnerstown.

State police at Limerick suggested that state police at Dublin might help because Spinnerstown is in their coverage area.

It was only through luck that an acquaintance of Dimitri's, with whom he lived until his relocation, had recently been issued a traffic citation. In addition to the Spinnerstown address, state police knew of Dimitri's pending move to Wescosville.

Attempts to reach him by phone failed and a check by the phone company showed that the phone at the new address had not been connected.

Enter state police at Fogelsville. They confirmed that Dimitri was living on Schantz Road after checking with neighbors.

"We had two very happy Yugoslavians on our hands," Cope recounted.

A drive to the home found no one there, so the Judges and Cope left notes on the doors to let Dimitri know the siblings were at the restaurant.

Shortly after 7 p.m., Dimitri returned home.

"I believe and don't believe. I'm so happy and so lost," Dimitri said. He immediately called the restaurant and said he was on his way there.

The reunion, at last realized, brought open sobs from the three, in each others' arms, weeping joyously. And the emotional relief quickly spread to the American friends who brought the family members together.

Said Dimitri, "It's incredible. I feel like I'm born. I'm too happy. We are very warm, our family in Europe. You can see a lot of very beautiful people all over, especially at Judge Cooper's. It's hard to believe they would do something like that. Who knows what happens if he doesn't walk into exactly my favorite place."